The present invention relates to a plurality of systems using data items in mutually different data formats and a technique to cooperatively operate the systems, and in particular, to a technique to obtain a conversion rule to convert data between different data formats.
Recently, attention has been attracted to a technique to construct a complex system at a low cost in a short period of time to provide a new business function by cooperatively operating existing systems of different types (systems using data items of different data formats or the respective systems).
Data formats such as data layouts, data types, and code systems are different from each other in the systems of different types. Therefore, to communicate data between the systems of different types, it is essential to conduct data format conversion between the systems.
To execute the conversion, U.S. Pat. No. 5,708,828 (hereinafter referred to as “Patent Document 1”) describes a technique to execute conversion processing using intermediate data in a data format which is an intermediate format between a plurality of systems. That is, Patent Document 1 describes a technique in which data is converted from a data format of a conversion source into an intermediate data format and then the data is converted from the intermediate data format into a data format of a conversion destination.